Another dramatic and emotional night in Anthony Joshua’s boxing career ultimately ended as just about everyone expected it would – with the countdown under way to a super-fight against Tyson Fury later in the year.
Joshua, 36, improved his record to 30-4, but he was almost on the end of one of the biggest shocks in his sport’s history when he was knocked down twice by little-known Albanian Kristian Prenga inside the first round.
The Briton regrouped in the second round to land a flurry of hard right hands, sending Prenga crashing to the canvas and getting the win he came to Jeddah for.
BBC Sport has selected some of the best pictures from the fight, which came seven months on from the car crash in Nigeria in which Joshua was injured and two of his closest friends died.
Olivia Attwood has revealed the ‘real reason’ why she was cuddling Pete Wicks in those cosy yacht pictures from last yearCredit: YouTube/Olivia’s House with Olivia AttwoodThe pair were snapped looking very cosy on a yacht in IbizaCredit: BackGrid
“Because there is a funny story here. Just as a subtext, okay I was obviously leaning back on him like on the yacht, but nothing happened.”
Olivia and her ex Bradley Dack split up earlier this yearCredit: GettyOlivia confirmed her relationship with Pete four months agoCredit: Getty
Mark then told her: “Tell the whole story!”
Olivia continued: “But the pictures, the actual came back was funny, right? So I am lent back on him and whatever…”
Mark chimed in: “Yeah, but let’s go first, when that woman dunked you! Do you remember? Rebecca is her name. She dunked. Do you remember?
“She slipped drunk and dunked you.”
Olivia confessed that she didn’t remember and Mark explained: “What the hell? You were getting out off the board, you know that board, where you jump? Do you not remember? Where were you?!”
“Did she give me concussion?! Because I don’t remember,” Olivia told him.
Mark continued: “So when you were getting out of the water, you know when you get in that board bit.
“You were getting out and she was rotten, fell down the stairs, slid and dunked you.”
Olivia asked: “So is that why he was cuddling me?”
Mark told her: “Yeah so when you were getting out, you were crying, and I was laughing.”
“I remember hitting my head, but I thought I hit it inside,” Olivia confessed.
Mark said: “No. It was when you got dunked under the water. And you were crying. I don’t see you cry at all.
“So I thought it was funny!”
Olivia then went on to explain the other part of the story.
She said: “Our friend Megan Elliot, who we love, we adore her. She is my second sister. She is my blood, my family.
“But love her, sometimes, she is a couple of sandwiches short of the whole picnic. Sometimes she comes out with things, we go “Oh, shut up, Megan!”
“So anyway, she goes, we’re in the middle of the ocean, right? And not posted anything for days.
“There’s a catamaran, so if you don’t know what a catamaran is, it’s one of those boats that has two bits, and then the middle bit is like, it’s a weird boat.
“She goes, “Someone is taking pictures of us off that boat! I saw a flash, it was massive.”
“And we go “Shut up, Megan!” We were all taking the p**s. Someone is taking pictures of us. Who do you think you are? Jennifer Aniston?!
“We were actually mocking her for it. And then she was like “No I swear!” We carried on about our business, next day we’re at the pool and I’m so hungover, I think I’m going to die.
“I’m on the back. I’m on the bed, and she comes in and she goes “Told you.” And then she was going all like “I told you, I told you”.
“She’s scrolling through and she goes “I knew it, I knew it. I saw…”
But in March, in a statement accusing her ex Bradley of cheating on her multiple times over their 10-year relationship, Olivia admitted she’s trying to move on.
“Yes, I’m dating,” wrote Olivia.
“Yes, I’m getting up every single day even when I have cried all night to film the shows I love filming, record my podcast, record my radio show, shoot campaigns and somewhere in there TRY to move on.”
Two powerful earthquakes have struck northern Venezuela, killing dozens of people, injuring hundreds and destroying homes and infrastructure. These images show the damage, rescue efforts and grief in the affected communities.
Sony Pictures will invest $100 million and take a minority stake in virtual reality venue operator Cosm, as the studio continues to build a business in communal experiences.
As part of the investment, Sony Pictures Chief Executive Ravi Ahuja will also join Cosm’s board of directors, the studio said Wednesday. The size of Sony’s minority stake was not disclosed.
The El Segundo-based Cosm currently operates three venues — one at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, and the others in Dallas and Atlanta. The company plans to open additional venues in Detroit and Cleveland.
Cosm bills itself as a “shared reality venue,” and its facilities center around a massive, wraparound screen that is intended to envelop viewers with additional digital effects. The company has largely focused on sports, though it has also shown Cirque du Soleil shows and done several collaborations with Warner Bros., including recent screenings of 2001’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” in honor of the film’s 25th anniversary.
“Cosm sits at the intersection of several trends shaping the future of entertainment,” Ahuja said in a statement. “We’ve followed Cosm since before launch and have been impressed with the quality of the experience and the enthusiasm it’s generating with audiences.”
At this year’s festival to unveil our inaugural Cannes issue, I had to opportunity to sit down with Sony Pictures Classics co-founders and co-presidents Michael Barker and Tom Bernard and EVP of Acquisitions, Production and Business Affairs Dylan Leiner on the Main Stage at the Marché du Film to discuss the company’s festival strategy, bidding wars, artificial intelligence and more. Watch the full conversation and read edited excerpts below.
How much does the festival reception of a movie, the reviews coming out of a festival, the buzz around it, shape decisions that you’re making? Or is it just confirming what your gut already knows?
Leiner: I want to tell one story that speaks to that, which was at the first Berlin Film Festival we attended after COVID. I remember, in the same day, I ran into three international distributors who all asked if we had seen “The Teacher’s Lounge.” And I didn’t even know what the film was. It wasn’t on our radar, it wasn’t in competition. So we quickly saw “Teacher’s Lounge” and we acquired the film [which went on to be nominated for the 2024 international feature Oscar]. And that was one of the great values of an in-person festival, the ability very quickly to communicate with distributors, with tastemakers, with critics from around the world and get that kind of information. Gut, personal taste… It plays into it a lot, but then we need reassurance. And being at a festival and being in this fishbowl environment is really helpful for that.
For a lot of people, myself included, the mystique of a festival is often around the bidding war narratives: Who’s going to pick up what and what are they going to pay? I’m curious for your take on the first big acquisition of this year’s Cannes, A24 buying “Club Kid” for a reported $17 million.
Bernard: Throughout the years, there were companies [that would] maybe overpay, or they were going to bid to get this movie no matter what, because they were the headline in all the newspapers covering this festival. So in terms of a company that’s branding — which, A24 is one of the best in branding — I think that that had to do with a little bit of the cash that went up. … There’s a branding aspect in a lot of festivals for a movie that’s a hot movie that the press has decided to seize on.
Barker: Here’s a key to how we have survived. It’s different from the way you talk about it. When we acquire a movie, whether anyone else has offers, we try to block it out. And we have trained ourselves to not let that noise bother us. What is it worth to us? What do we think it’s going to do? Dylan runs these incredible models of what it’ll do on the low end, what it will do on the high end. And then you decide where you want to be.
Bernard: Or we think we can make it work.
Barker: But at no point do we sit around and worry about who else has a higher offer for the movie. Because I have to say, in very few instances, on the movies we buy, are we the higher offer. We just do the best we can, and if we lose it, we lose it.
Bernard: [French film producer] Serge Silberman, a sage of the past, he always said, “You never lose money on a movie you didn’t buy.”
That brings up a question that I had about “Nuremberg,” which was a real success.What you’re saying is,it performed in alignment with your expectations. Were there any lessons that you took away from that in terms of future projects that might come along?
Leiner: Yes, it performed in accordance with our expectations. What’s interesting about that film, we acquired it here last year. Nobody else was really interested in the movie. … So our challenge basically was to figure out how to convince the filmmaking team that, because it was a very expensive film, that we were the right company to acquire the film on the terms that we could afford and that we could make it work. And it was a very intense series of phone conversations, in-person meetings.
Bernard: We felt like we were auditioning to get married to somebody. We were never going to be able to pay to make their money back. It was a $40-million movie, and they were really sort of out there without anybody really looking at it. And we said, “Listen, sell it to us. We think it’s going to be a great success. We’ll make your movie way more valuable over the test of time.”
Barker: There are two types of movies that are being made and distributed. One are the big tentpole studio movies. It’s about winning the weekend theatrically. These are the theatrical-driven movies. And it’s all about making that huge budget back very quickly. But the other kind of film, which is why we are in business, is the evergreen. Every one of our films, we open it with the best marketing push we can. Yes, we try to get the highest box office. But what we know will happen, even if the box office ends up being less, we believe in these films as long-term players. And these films have really long tails. You look at movies like “Run Lola Run” or “Call Me By Your Name” or even “Living” … They have generated revenues to the filmmakers and to us that’s way beyond what the box office would have portended when it opened.
I would be curious, what areas of the filmmaking process or the film distribution process do you think AI is appropriate for use, that you’ve experimented with it, that you’re excited about its prospects? And where are your red lines, if you have any?
Barker: One of the people on our staff — we really love our young staff. One of them was writing a screenplay with AI, and told me they got certain rules on AI. And I’m listening to all these rules. You can’t have your main character die in a first scene. You can’t have your romantic female lead be totally unlikable, people aren’t going to go. I’m listening to this, and I said, “Have you ever seen ‘Sunset Boulevard?’” And she goes, “No, what is that?” I said, “Go watch that movie.” She came back and she was like, “Holy cow.” I said, “Billy Wilder sat down and made that up based on what he observed.” AI is not going to be able to do that.
